The sound of Caesar’s voice dragged her back to the present, her body tensing instinctively and immediately when he reached out and drew her towards him, his arm around her waist. He was simply playing a role. She knew that. If she felt acutely aware of him then it was simply because she didn’t like the deception she was being forced to share. Nothing to do with the fact that she was acutely aware of the hard male strength of his arm around her in its parody of protection. She certainly wasn’t in the least bit vulnerable to the image Caesar was creating, and nor was she vulnerable to those quivers of sensation springing from the contact between their bodies. Even if that contact between them was making her tremble from head to foot.
Caesar could clearly see Louise’s rejection of her body’s helpless response to him in her gaze. All those years ago she had trembled just as she was doing now—but back then she had made no attempt to conceal her body’s reaction to his simplest movement, as though she had been powerless to control her sensual response to him, openly delighting in it instead, as her eager yearning movements towards him had urged him to take what she was offering. Guilt shadowed his own body’s automatic response to this unwanted betrayal of her reaction to him. Why did it so affect him to see that, though she was so obviously hostile to that reaction, she was incapable of controlling it? What was the matter with him? He wasn’t a naive boy to be driven by a need he couldn’t control simply because a woman trembled with sensual awareness of him. He had far more important matters on which he needed to focus. It was Oliver who mattered now. Oliver and his future. Oliver’s acceptance by his people and with that Louise’s acceptance as well.
‘You will have to forgive me, Aldo,’ he told the village headman. ‘I confess I can hardly bear to let Louise out of my sight now that we have found one another again after so many years apart.’ As he said the words Caesar recognised how much truth they held. Because if he let Louise out of his sight she was likely to leave and take Oliver with her.
Caesar’s voice was warm and soft, his look for her tender and rueful, his hold on her that of a man who had no intention of letting her go—all very much in keeping with the attitude expected from a newly married man reunited with an old and lost love, Louise recognised, but of course none of it meant anything. And did she want it to? No, of course not. She only had to think of the past and the way in which Caesar had treated her and hurt her to know that.
But if that past didn’t stand between them, if she was meeting him now for the first time, with no preconceptions to overshadow them …? Hah—that was good, when the only reason she was here was because of a very important conception indeed: that of their son. Without Ollie there would be no reason for Caesar to want her in his life, no reason for him to pretend he cared about her, and certainly no reason for him to marry her.
‘I can’t say that this isn’t a surprise,’ Aldo Barado responded, before acknowledging grudgingly, ‘Although there is no question that the boy has to be yours.’
‘No question at all,’ Caesar agreed, the hard note of steel in his voice causing Louise’s heart to flip over, as though it really was foolish enough to believe that Caesar genuinely wanted to protect her.
‘My duchess has been generous indeed in giving me the chance to make up for my past errors of judgement,’ Caesar continued. ‘And, given the understanding I have discovered in her nature, I am sure she will be prepared to extend the same generosity to others as well.’
Louise’s eyes widened slightly as she listened to this exchange. She was under no illusions where Aldo Barado was concerned. He was the one who had kept the gossip flowing and who had stirred up more trouble for her in their community in London. She didn’t need her degree to know that he had not been heading for her because he wanted to apologise for the past—far from it.
‘I am a very lucky man,’ Caesar went on. ‘A man who is proud to say how honoured he is to have such a wife, and to have the gift of a son.’
‘A son is indeed a great gift,’ Aldo Barado agreed.
‘Later this week the ashes of my wife’s grandparents will be interred at the church of Santa Maria. It will be fitting and respectful for those from the village where they grew up to attend that event. I shall donate a new stained-glass window to replace the one that was broken by last year’s storms in honour of their memory.’
Nothing more was said. Nothing more needed to be said.
Louise knew how the community worked. Caesar had given an instruction and Aldo Barado would carry it out. The people of her grandparents’ home village would attend the interment of their ashes, and in doing so grant them the respect her grandfather had always wanted. With just a handful of words Caesar had achieved what she could never have made happen. Such was his power. Once he had used that power against her. Now he was using it for the benefit of her grandparents. Because Oliver was his son. That was what mattered to Caesar. Nothing and no one else. Certainly not her. Well, that was fine by her. She didn’t want to matter to Caesar. Not one little bit. He certainly didn’t matter to her.
She waited until Aldo Barado had gone before rounding on Caesar to hiss indignantly, ‘There was no need for you to come over. I am perfectly capable of dealing with the likes of Aldo Barado. He might have terrified me as a girl; he might have bullied and humiliated my poor grandparents. But things are different now. And as for what you said about the service. Do you really think I want anyone there who has to be bribed to attend?’
‘You might see it that way, but to your grandparents and the more traditional amongst the villagers how many members of their community are there is important.’
There was too much truth in what he was saying for her to be able to deny it, but at least she was able to tell him curtly, ‘You can let me go now. There’s no need to go on with the charade. Aldo’s gone.’
‘His isn’t the only scrutiny to which we will be subject,’ Caesar told her, keeping his arm around her waist and leaning towards her as though he was about to whisper some private endearment to her rather than having a far more mundane conversation. ‘We both agreed that for Oliver’s sake it is important that our marriage is accepted as being the result of an old love-match between us. People will expect to see at least some outward evidence of that love—especially on our wedding day.’
With his free hand he tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear, his gaze fixed on her mouth as though he was having to restrain himself from kissing her. How was it possible for her lips to burn and swell as they were doing just because he was looking at them, almost caressing them with that assured, tormenting male gaze that lied when it said so publicly that he couldn’t wait to crush their softness beneath the fierce pressure of a passionate kiss.
Her face was burning now, her throat aching, her instinctive betraying, ‘Don’t,’ a suffocating sound of frantic denial.
‘Don’t what?’ Caesar challenged her.
‘Don’t look at me like that.’
‘And how am I looking at you?’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ Louise said shakily. ‘You were looking at me as though …’
‘As though I want to take you to bed? Isn’t that exactly what we’ve agreed that we want people to think?’
Was it? She couldn’t remember them ever discussing the reality of having him look at her the way he was doing now, but somehow her brain was refusing to work, and any idea of cool logical thought was impossible to formulate in the fierce aching heat within her body and her frantic attempts to smother those flames. What was happening to her? It was ten years since she had last lain in a man’s arms—ten years since the one and only time she had experienced the intensity of physical desire allied to what she had naively then thought of as love.
‘We’re married. Surely that’s enough to convince them that we want to be together? After all we aren’t going to … That is we won’t be …’
For all that little tremor earlier, Louise was showing him what